


The Loyal Dog

by syntheticrealities (orphan_account)



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, post Low Chaos ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 00:48:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1725071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/syntheticrealities
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a war gone past and a battle won, the soldier is left with little to do but remember what he has done and whether it is even worth the effort to try and wash the blood from his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Why Do You Drift So, Loyal Dog?

In the glimmers of pre-dawn light, the church bells pealed out the start of a new day. As the golden sound raced across the city, Corvo looked up at the lightening sky.

A year after Emily's coronation much had changed. On his wanderings, Corvo no longer saw swarms of hungering rats. Or thugs wielding their blades openly. Or much of anything, for that matter. So many were dead or dying of the plague that it was a wonder there was anyone left to fill this half-broken city. Everyone who was healthy and of working age had gone to sea; in a month or so the vessels would return and the city would rebuild itself anew, buoyed forwards on a tide of oil and food.

Not for the first time, he had found he was of little use to the young Empress. He was little good at helping her rule: the advisors he had picked himself helped her with that. And he had no need to guard her either: the Watch, having nothing better to do, almost entirely fell back on the palace.

He appreciated the peace, he honestly did. To the eyes of a man who had known this city for so many years, it was heartening to see it strengthening again. It was almost as if Jessamine was still alive, still ruling as justly as ever.

As he walked, his pace picked up slightly. There was no good in dwelling on times gone past-walking that little bit faster made him feel as if he could just outrun his memories. But they were there now, pulling at his dark coattails and forcing him to duck left and hurry down the steps to the docks two at a time. Beside the murky green waters, Corvo sat and stared at the reflections of the buildings behind him, but his mind's eye was elsewhere.

Two years ago, and he's walking through the gardens. His steps are light and quick, practiced in silence. He hears a branch snap and a muffled giggle and pauses for dramatic effect in the bend of the path. For a moment he pretends that he heard nothing; that he did not see the brief flicker of a leg being drawn up higher. But then he's turned around in a flurry of brocade, reaching up to pry the heir to the throne from her perch up above. She's laughing and her smile is infectious and before either of them know it, he's quite forgotten that he's just the Lord Protector and nothing more and he's lifted her high above him, spinning on his heels so her black hair flies all around, drawing delighted shrieks from a girl who he cannot openly admit to being his daughter.

In the memory, he blinks. But when he opens his eyes again, all that fills his vision is the languorous waters of the estuary slipping by. He scowls at his reflection as by his mind it has no right to be there; it should be Emily's face he sees before him, smiling and full of life, not his own scarred and grim visage.

His threatening look does not ward off the apparition in the water however and he swears that between the ripples, it took on that other face he knows, the one he really doesn't want to see again, but the wind changes and the Outsider is gone again with the next ripple. Corvo refuses the thought that he was disappointed by this and upon the return of his reflection looking back at him, he beats a hand against the water and shatters himself.

Then he's up and away again, taking the steps two at a time before the water can settle and those empty obsidian eyes have a chance to look back at him again.

~0O0~

As he leaves the docks, he is met with yet another ghost. This time, it wears the silhouette of one of those horrid watchtowers that caused him so much havoc seemingly so long ago. In the cool light of dawn, it's hunched form does not look abandoned or lifeless at all. Shuddering, Corvo hurries on.

He hates how useless he is now. He cannot feel at ease around Emily anymore; his own blood and yet their words are terse and formal. What makes it worse is that when they speak, he can see in her gaze that she still holds the ghost of a childhood cut short in her eyes. Already, she is a queen, far beyond him and his hollow words.

Without knowing what he is doing, he is framing that thought of moving without moving in his mind again and the fingers on his left hand are clenching tight against something that isn't really in his palm. He feels the power pulsing in his arm, his whole body, and when he opens his eyes again, he's on the rooftops, looking down on the streets where he stood just a moment ago.

For a while, he stands on the spine of the roof. It would be so easy to just slip and fall and be with her again, his Jessamine. But the smooth slates stay pressed against the arches of his feet and his hands drift to his pockets, absently turning over a stray pistol round as he watches the sun rise.

These days, his thoughts tend to be elsewhere. Corvo Attano drifts in a state of limbo, for he will not allow himself to remain in the present, but he never lets himself stray for too long in the past.

In the Void, the Outsider nods to himself over this revelation. Corvo has long since lost any reason to be of interest to him, yet still he finds himself watching the mortal man as he walks like a ghost through the streets of his ghost city.

Sometimes, he is watching the waters of the docks slide by. Others, he is signing official documents without seeing his ink seep into the paper. Rarer still, the god looks down to find his...Protégé studying the mark on the back of his hand. He was never so fascinated by it before, but now it draws his gaze like a fly to lamplight.

Unfortunately, the sun does not dawdle over its rising and before he realises where time has gotten away to now, it's morning and the day has begun proper. Once again, Corvo had to face the fact that he had nothing to do. But rather than run from it as he had earlier, now he embraced it. Surely he would not be missed? He hadn't been before. A day to spend how he wished would be a nice change from his schedule of wandering aimlessly. Deciding that this was indeed what he would do with his day, the Lord Protector walked easily along the spine of the roof, not needing to put his hands out for balance as he did so. Already the stone of the chimney stack was pleasantly warm from the sun shining on it and it was nice to lean back on it and reach for a cigarette.

Where the city should have been wakening in a storm of started engines and women crying that day's catch, Corvo was able to appreciate the flinty scrape of his lighter in the full silence of Dunwall's abandonment.

Drawing in the hot smoke, Corvo warmed himself with the falsified sensation of warmth. He exhaled slowly, the tendrils of smoke curling around his face and obscuring the view of the city he's grown to hate in the same move. He almost missed the flicker of movement beside him. Almost.

A glance sideways brought an unlikely image into focus. The Outsider was sat beside him, long legs laid flat against the slates. Corvo's look was an incredulous one and his only acknowledgement of the omniscient deity was a disbelieving huff as he turned his gaze out to sea again.

Had Corvo been looking, he would have seen a more muted version of that same expression cross his companion's face. But he wasn't, so he didn't.

"And what, pray tell, brings the Outsider to my humble rooftop?" Corvo began, forming the words around the cigarette that still hung between his lips.

The Outsider shared the view for a moment before replying offhandedly:

"I was curious as to how this world fared after my gifts to you"

The reply to that was a bitterly amused grunt and the Lord Protector motioned with his chin to the buildings spread out before them.

"See for yourself. The plague has near enough died out, yes, but so has everyone else. Lady Emily has been left to rule an empty city, filled with nothing but ghosts. I would have thought you could tell that from up there though"

The Outsider considered this carefully, deciding to not correct the other man in his crude description of the Void: it wasn't "up there" or anywhere really, but existed on top of all the worlds there were, overlaid onto them like a sheet of tracing paper. He doubted that Corvo was in the correct frame of mind to appreciate the finer points of spacial physics, so he let it slide.

"Well of course I can," he replied in a drawl, "but I was...Curious about you, what this has done to you"

He snapped at that, rising tensely and striding out along the roof because he needed to be away from him-no doubt it wouldn't be in his best interests to punch a god in the face. Even if he deserved it.

"Surely you can see that too? Look at me, if you cannot see! I am worn and scarred, broken and beaten beyond repair. I ache every day no matter how much I rest and I feel as though I am wasting away. That is what this has done to me"

He had not turned to face the god as he had made this vehement declaration of self-loathing. But the anger behind his words said everything it needed to.

There was a long beat of silence. Corvo turned on his heel, expecting to see the Outsider smirking at him, but there was nothing against the chimney stack aside from his own shadow. For whatever reason, that just made him even more enraged. The one person who had even remotely shown some form of concern from him had just upped and left without a word. Then again, what else did he expect of the Outsider?


	2. Why Do You Linger So, Loyal Dog?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is more locked behind the whitewashed walls of the palace than brick and mortar and the Outsider questions Corvo's apparent love for self-destructive tendencies.

One of the first things Emily had done as Empress was to re-assign Corvo's chambers in the palace to him. After Coldridge and the cobbbled-together illusion of comfort in the Hound Pits, he was welcome for a change of scene.

As with most places these days however, the rooms brought back bitter memories.

Drifting a hand over the cool alabaster wall, he is hit with the image of her pressed up against it, wily limbs barely contained as she broke the precarious sense of proffesionalism between them one of many times. It was but one of the many places in Dunwall Tower that had seen their passions: Corvo smiles wryly to himself as he recalls even now the taste Jessamine had for risk. Back then, when they were both young and the lure of a perhaps-forbidden romance still teased them, crates and garden benches had served just as well as the plush velvet sheets that graced her chambers.

But when the heated images fade away, he is saddened to see that no slim fingers are entwined with his where they rest against the chalky wall and that no sounds echo into the rafters aside from his own frustrated hiss.

Even then, he had rarely spent time in his chambers. Corvo had been as loyal as any Royal Protector could have been, often staying up late into the hours of morning making unnannounced patrols. Other nights he was with her, doing other unnannounced things. The fact that he has only returned to his rooms, a barely-lived in skeleton, is a source of bitter amusement for him. Only now, with Emily needing to keep him out of the way and Jessamine unable to tempt him from his rounds, can the ghost return to his old haunt.

But even with all the bitterness he held for that place in the memories of why he was never there, the aging man in Corvo is grudging to admit that it is the finest bed he has ever had the courtesy to sleep upon. In the warm embrace of down-stuffed pillows and silk-trimmed sheets, he is able to avoid the day for much longer than he was able back then. Already his instincts are beginning to slip away, as more often than not the sun is already well-risen when he slips from his bed to press his feet against the startling cold of the marble floor.

At least with the way the small balcony faces, no one can catch him standing there in the face of the rising sun, nude aside from the hair on his chest and the juice from the pear running down his chin. Its lazy and slobbish and used to be the one thing Jessamine had never interrupted (apparently she had enjoyed the view, as he had once found multiple sketches of him standing on said balcony with his back to the bed, giving her the perfect point of view to capture the supposedly impressive sight of his backside on paper), but he is beyond caring.

Now, these early-morning musings are not dedicated to such frivolous thoughts as recalling a tumbling between the sheets, but instead to the future-something that a much younger Corvo was always inclined to wrinkle his nose at. Now when he stands there with the sunlight glinting on his scars, he worries of Emily and of Dunwall, of whatever became of Daud when he spared him that fateful day in the Flooded District all that time ago and whether or not he is still a threat. He is concerned that all his efforts were for naught and that one day when he is pretending not to hear his Empress weeping from the stress of it all, she will be shedding unseen tears of red.

The flesh of the pear turns sour in his mouth at that thought, so he hurls it out to see and watches the gannets scramble over the juicy morsel before it is lost to the waves. He thinks that the still-expensive delicacy is far less wasted on the rats of the sea than such lowly stuff as himself. The birds at least have families of their own to provide for-what is Corvo now but one more hungry mouth to feed?

The palace is still asleep at that time of morning, so when Corvo is greeted with the soft sound of footsteps approaching from inside, he knows it is likely to be but one person.

Surprisingly, he cares little for his state of undress. In his mind, there is little left worth covering-any lustre his golden skin once had is faded and the planes of muscle that were smooth and toned in youth are now wiry and criss-crossed with scars. What he doesn't know is that to his company's mind, there is nothing more beautiful than the marks etched in his skin. Though he knows it already, the Outsider can read the story of Corvo's life in the marks it has left on him-that one on his shoulder from the fringes of a grenade explosion, this one on his cheek from a close shave with an Overseer's sabre. They are ink on a page and though faded, the handwriting of fate is no less beautiful.

"Why do you linger so, Corvo? These halls hold nothing but memories of days gone past for you"

"My Empress gifted them to me as a reward for my loyal service. I am but her humble servant and it would be a gross insult if I were to turn them down." he replied mechanically, with none of the zest the same sentence would have been accompanied with had it come from the mouth of a young man still growing to fill the shoulders of his coat.

"Yet the pain laced in the mortar of these walls is not sufficient to keep you away...I do not understand why you would stay if it hurts you so."

"Because memories are all I have. I must treasure them like fine china before my age catches up with me and madness smashes them into little more than useless shards."

"What do you think that would make you, Corvo? A piece of china good for little more than looking handsome in his display cabinet, or a distrustful shard soon to poke into the sole of whomever is unfortunate enough to step on you first?"

There is genuine curiosity in his voice, despite the thinly-veiled insults in his words. Corvo's gaze remains on the squabbling seabirds down below.

"It makes me an old dress sword that is kept sharp for when the next war rises." he replied grimly, turning away from the scene of the god watching the birds turn on each other and turn the foamy waves pink.

The Outsider does not mention that he hears the slight limp in the other man's stride as he pads softly across the tiles.

And Corvo does not voice the small thought that questions why of all times in the day the Outsider could appear, it would be when he is naked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merp only a short chapter today guys. I am also so vERY SORRY I HAVE NOT UPDATED THIS OMG. Mainly because this fic got way more views than I thought it would and during my falling into the Team Fortress 2 fandom I completely forgot about it. So have more angsty Corvo as an apology. Another note is that each chapter is going to be like a small drabble, though the underlying plot if ofc going to be the Outsider realising just why he still talks to Corvo though he by no rights should be interesting anymore aka perhaps wanting to do the do. Oh, and there might be mentions of self harm in the next chapter~
> 
> ~SyntheticRealities


	3. Why Do You Bleed So, Loyal Dog?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has found long ago that there is something comforting about deciding where his scars will go.  
> ((Mentions of self harm and kinda-sorta bloodplay here guys, don't like, don't read))

Dunwall is full of cracks. Tiny crevices and alcoves that nurture shadows at all times of day, places that keep the company of rats and more frequently, that of crows also.

In the lee of some old distillery or other, he has folded himself. There is less of him to try and wedge into these small spaces now; where he had once labored to shrink broad shoulders down to fit into drains and windows, now he slumps in the miniscule area provided by the doorway as easily as if it were the same windowsill he sat upon to mope in his sulkier teenage years.

His eyes are almost as blank and empty as those of the whale-god now. Unseeing, he watches as thick red blood floods down his arm. The flow of it is mesmerizing. Cold steel bites into his skin over and over, drawing precious red up from his bones. In the shadows he bleeds black, an assassin's blood long-tainted with misery and evil. Whatever small part of him that remains on guard, ever watchful for danger, for noise, for that one blade that will come spinning out of the dark just _there_ and pin him to the wall, shrieks indignantly about the lack of sense in injurying himself in this way.

Corvo ignores it.

The pain is a welcome distraction from other thoughts, ones that run too closely to Death's side to be entirely healthy. That and the fact that such dammage as this is as close as he will allow himself to stray to the afterlife. _No, not just yet._

What Corvo refuses to acknowledge is that he enjoys it. The giving of pain, the receiving of it-a desire he did not get to express when his focus was to remain a ghost and not a demon when going about his dark business. Even now, as his brow furrows in a mixture of pain and things that are surely blasphemous, his heart beats a little faster and the blood tumbles across his skin a little quicker.

It is with morbid curiosity that he haltingly brings the flat of his blade to his lips and draws it across his tongue. Salt and rust explode in his mouth, though the stories of bloodsucking men never said that it was so _sweet._ In spite of the fact that it is his own life he drinks, Corvo bends his head and laps greedily at the cuts, relishing the sting of the torn flesh and the sugary salt on his tongue and _Maker preserve me_ , but he should not take such pleasure in this-this-

The taste of blood might have woken some inhuman instinct in him, because when the sound of an amused huff plays out to his right, the knife is reversed and flung outwards with such vehemency that he does not realise what he has done until he hears the muffled thunk of the blade nuzzling it's way between ribs. Corvo snaps out of whatever dark trance he had fallen into and shrinks further into the doorway, not at all encouraged by the mixture of laughter and irritable growling as the sickly sucking sound of a blade being drawn from a chest is made.

He cannot see him, but the Lord Protector knows who it is-who it was. That is, if the past tense was required. His company was not exactly capable of dropping dead of such laughable things as mortal steel.

"Corvo, Corvo, Corvo...Did your mother never teach you not to play with knives?"

In the lamplight, his teeth shine glittering white, though Corvo is not entirely sure if he wants anything to do with the way they form such wicked little points. It is not readable in his eyes, but it so...Interesting, the way he had savoured the taste of his own life force so much. The Outsider also knows it is not the first nor only fluid to come from Corvo's body that has graced his lips. Boredom does truly incredible things to the mind of an adolescent young man and needless to say, the Outsider also knows that Corvo is of the opinion that the other stuff was not so much as salty as bitter.

Perhaps a little disappointed that this revelation prevented Corvo from taking too many male lovers (yes, there had been a few over the years,) the god knelt to the oily cobbles and with elegant fingers, flipped the blade around and offered it to the man in the shadows, ivory pommel first.

Corvo's eyes are dark with suspicion, but he takes the blade from the god anyway, tilting it against the light and noting the thick black stuff that has mingled with his own blood on the steel in a wonderful tapestry of pain. When he looks up again, the Outsider is crouched before him, touching the slowy-weeping wound on his chest with what can only be described as detached interest. In the lamplight, his shirt is becoming stained with oil as he watches it trickle down his slim fingers.

The god does not take his dead gaze off of the substance of his own life (or death, or perhaps neither of these things) when he speaks to Corvo.

"Why do you bleed so, loyal dog? What purpose is there in draining your own life away?"

"...There is no purpose. It is...An act of boredom."

They both know this is a lie, but Corvo's eyes are back on his arm again and so he steadfastly ignores the weighty look of the deity as he wordlessly questions the honesty of that.

"Emily has been allowing you to grow lax, hasn't she? Shoving you to the side now that the messy work has been done without even so much as a thankyou-"

"Do not speak of her that way."

His reprimand is almost silent, but his shoulders are trembling and the Outsider grins slowly.

"But it is true, is it not? You are slowly being driven mad by the lack of fighting, aren't you? Wasting and withering away like a retired war horse in his stables. Such a waste, I must say, but it is just so...Intriguing to watch where life has taken you."

Corvo's grip on the blade is white-knuckled, but for the sake of his own safety, he restrains the urge to bury his blade in the hollow of the Outsider's throat, despite how the pale skin moves over it in such a wonderfully liquid way. Perhaps it would _not_ be a wise descicion to test the boundaries of his immortality today.

It seems the god has had his fun (or does not wish to risk being _stabbed_ again, it was unclear) because he rose from his crouch gently and walked away into the street, pausing on the boundary between lamplight and dead of night.

"And Corvo?"

"Yes?"

"Do not forget to bandage those wounds of yours. What a shame it would be to see you drop dead of blood fever when you've come this far."

And he was gone. The condescending amusement in his voice makes bile rise in Corvo's throat.

So it was almost spitefully that he brought the blade to his lips again and relished every skein of liquorice and whiskey-laced black blood that lay there so temptingly. Of course, it was no small source of amusement to the god that partaking of such substances as that would make Corvo violently ill into a nearby drain.

_Oh, the cruel injustice of the unexpected._

 

 


End file.
